


daucus carota

by aishiteita



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, M/M, Personification
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 17:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9195311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aishiteita/pseuds/aishiteita
Summary: No one knows when it started, this saying in the mountains, exchanged between chapped lips seeking warmth as they whisper, "I would be a tundra for you."No one ever comes out of the tundra alive.(Till death do us partis so much weaker in comparison, when the tundra manages to defy death itself. Such is love.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Culling Season](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6724738) by [epistolic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/epistolic/pseuds/epistolic). 



> HAPPY SOONWOO DAY 2017!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is a once in a millennia deal. wow  
> this is a.. very new style for me. i'm sorry if it comes across strange or subpar.   
> but lian, godbless, elevated Everything with her BEAUTIFUL artworks!!! found here in the fic's [tumblr](http://daucus--carota.tumblr.com) and also her twitter [@faketrbl](https://twitter.com/faketrbl)!!!!! thank you so much for your patience and enthusiasm lian bub. what would this fic be without you. thank you for enduring my constant whining and being so loving ever since the hatching of this fic's idea.. ilu. pls give lian's art lots of love <3
> 
> also thank you cat, ao3 user allthatconfetti, for helping me sort through the mess that was this fic.  
> thank you cat and kristine, ao3 user coupsd, for enduring my tiny screams while writing. you two are irreplaceable. my loves. ((please check out their fics in the [collection](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/supernova2017)!!))
> 
> thank you to [melanie](http://twitter.com/epistolic) also, for this fic was more or less inspired by [hers](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6724738), and i was kindly allowed to use her idea for mine. your works are one of a kind, ma <3
> 
> lastly, thank you sososo much to [soonwoonet](http://twitter.com/soonwoonet), the rowdiest yet softest bunch. you make my days brighter. it's always so fun to be in the gcs (sfw and otherwise). this fic is for you.
> 
> i hope you enjoy!

No one knows when it started, this saying in the mountains, exchanged between chapped lips seeking warmth as they whisper, "I would be a tundra for you."

No one ever comes out of the tundra alive.

( _Till death do us part_ is so much weaker in comparison, when the tundra manages to defy death itself. Such is love.)

 

 

***

 

 

It is unbearably cold in the mountains, that much the new Forest-to-be knew. A vast space of pewter; the edges of new rocks too clean, a wicked gleam under sunlight that seemed to have surrendered in the face of snow.

The Forest-to-be woke to the feeling of not feeling anything at all, Winter walking past him carrying a blanket of white on his back, trailing after his quiet footsteps which froze the ground underneath in spirals of blue. Winter noticed the body sprawled at his feet, the labored breathing yielding desperate plumes of grey to counter his blinding white. The ground upon which the Forest-to-be laid upon was still dark.

The Forest-to-be was not aware of his new role, green a foreign concept as the universe rewrote itself in his eyes in shades of white upon black upon white. He saw death in the white and the black and everything in between, saw death when he looked up to Winter's steely gaze, pallor like stale water clouded over by its icy film.

Winter grabbed his thick blanket by the ends, a mass of white showering over the Forest-to-be and he wanted to scream, but it was too cold, _so cold._ A cold that stripped away body from its soul, shiver the skin off flesh.

"Wait," Winter gasped, setting the blanket aside before kneeling next to the Forest-to-be's head. He cradled it, cradled purple cheeks and jet black hair, watched how every second of touching the other's skin made his palms wet—he was melting. "You're the new Forest."

The black lightens where the Forest-to-be's fingertips touched the ground. On black was a muted brown, spreading away from his hands excruciatingly slow, but the lichen eventually meets the white blanket, taking over in slow curls and branches mimicking that of Winter's frost.

"You're failing," said Winter to the pale lichen struggling underneath his feet. But he did not pull the blanket over the other's body; he remained still, water dripping down the length of his bony, icicle-like fingers as heat seeps into them. "You can't fail. You're not even a forest yet."

"But you're going to kill me," said the Forest-to-be, stuttering and his words broken up.

"I won't," Winter whispered while he carefully let the Forest-to-be's head rest on his lap. "I won't let you die. You haven't even seen Spring."

He pulled the blanket of white over pale green, the weak lichen helpless from the numbing cold when snow settled over it. Numbing cold that pierced through skin and flesh and bone, to the core of being where it would stop time for the whole of a Season and leave everything as it was until the Sun returned in tow with Spring to thaw the ice out.

"Soonyoung," Winter told the Forest-to-be, fingers caressing his stiffened hair, "did you know your name is Soonyoung?"

The Forest-to-be could not shake his head to say no, only closed his eyes and felt relief wash over him when the cold numbed even his dying thoughts.

 

 

The next time Winter bothered to pay the mountains a visit, Soonyoung had the rocks painted viridian. The moss was soft to the touch.

"Impressive," Winter hummed, a small grin on his face as he tiptoed about the plains, making sure he did not linger on one spot for too long as the green would freeze. Soonyoung noticed his careful steps and laughed, a tinkling sort that rustled the leaves slightly.

"Spring was nice," Soonyoung said, watching the rocks disintegrate around him, lichen strong and no longer scared of Winter's chill. "He taught me how to grow stronger roots."

"I can tell." Winter swooped down to sit next to Soonyoung, idly toying with his white blanket. "It's getting harder to freeze the ground, now."

When Winter finally looked up from the crumbling rocks, it was to Soonyoung smiling in a way that showed he had spent too much time with Spring. Something golden behind dark hair turning browner, the Sun dripping between teeth. Soonyoung took a rock, half-frozen and still bare, and he warmed it within his palms for a few seconds. Winter held his breath as a fresh layer of moss overtook ice.

"One day, I'll learn to grow things even in the winter," Soonyoung promised him with the same dazzling smile that threatened to thaw Winter's entire existence away.

 

 

"I never got your name."

Winter turned his head to face Soonyoung, who had stopped swinging his arms in an attempt to make snow angels, the way children did whenever Soonyoung saw them frolic about. They lied down in craters the size of their tiny bodies, like the travelers who buried themselves halfway up the mountain when it got too steep. Soonyoung saw the children bury themselves deeper with every swipe of their plump arms across the snow. Ice did not mean death in their eyes, and Soonyoung thought the same, feeling the frost uncurling where his feet touched the ground.

"Do you need to know?" Winter shot back, but not abrasively. Quiet; that was Winter. Most of his voice had been spent in the valleys, morning yawns that got louder as the days got shorter, yawns that devolved into inhumane howling and shrieking as Winter's merciless winds lashed at flesh, entered homes to kill its inhabitants by rendering their spines useless. Winter was at least comforted by the knowledge that they mostly died in their sleep.

"I don't," Soonyoung told him, patient. "But I would like to."

Winter mulled over this for some time, the heat of Soonyoung's body next to him melting the ice on Winter's arms. The gold had disappeared from his face; amber was all that was left. Amber and soot lining the soft edges of his Forest. "I see you've made friends with Summer."

"Summer practically burned me alive," Soonyoung whined, voice crackly and reaching Winter in waves.

Winter chuckled. "Did she?"

"It really hurt when she did." Soonyoung lifted his arm to show a large patch of new skin, still pink and film-like; so thin that Winter feared the skin would tear if he so much as laid a finger on Soonyoung. "Autumn tried to help me, but there was only so much she could do. She helped it dry. It was all brown and ugly when it flaked off."

Warily, Winter let his hand hover over the skin. Soonyoung shivered from the cold, and Winter retracted his hand, fingers drawn into a loose fist as he did. The fingers thawed, icicles melting in apology.

"You can touch," Soonyoung told him, "I was just caught off guard. Sorry."

Winter did as told; fingers resting upon Soonyoung's still-pink skin with more care than was necessary. It started to turn purple, and Winter wanted to remove his hand away but Soonyoung held him by the wrist, forced the hand to stay.

"I will kill you," Winter whispered, panic settling in as the wind picked up around them like razorblades. "I don't want to kill you."

"You won't kill me," Soonyoung reassured him, "not when I still don't know your name."

Soonyoung told him to remember the children balling up snow in their small gloved hands, remember the carols resounding throughout the mountains on Solstice Day, the flowers Soonyoung had yet to bloom from fresh snow. There were fingers around Winter's bony wrist, searing warmth cutting through his ice and he let Soonyoung melt him, the ice slowly inching across Soonyoung's skin thawing it back to pink, like tiny peonies blooming on a thin twig.

"Wonwoo," Winter said, as shaky as the last few leaves of Autumn, "my name is Wonwoo."

"Wonwoo," Soonyoung repeated. The name did not sound like doom, or death, or broken locks and rattling windows when it slipped out of Soonyoung's lips. It was a bell, the large one at the foot of the mountain where the village started, sonorous and it echoed, calling the children home. "I like it. That's a nice name."

Wonwoo pursed his lips together, hands still melting against the pink of Soonyoung's skin, but he did not mind. "Thank you."

 

 

***

 

 

Should lovers confess to each other on Solstice Day, it is said that their love would last throughout eternity.

 

 

***

 

 

Soonyoung grew faster than any Forest had ever grown, pine trees at full height and covering the entire face of the mountain in its dark green that was nearly black. Winter could not cover the Forest anymore, blanket of snow mere specks of white from the distance, like fine sugar that the villagers could never have enough of.

"You're early," Soonyoung remarked, observing where the grass stopped to meet snow under his feet. Wonwoo offered him a bashful grin sweet enough for the children to eat up.

"Is it a bad thing that I am?" was his question, rhetoric, and Soonyoung tugged at his sleeves. He pulled Wonwoo along to the thick of the Forest where he had been hard at work forcing the ground to cave under his palms, carving out a crater with his bare hands and he had waited for Spring and Summer to shower it with rain, until it overflowed and Autumn had to help him clean up the mud, make the water bright and clear for Winter.

"Autumn said it'd be beautiful come Winter," Soonyoung said. He would not stop stealing glances at Wonwoo, waiting for the Sun to shine through the ice and show off Wonwoo's outline in iridescent blue. But instead, he was met with the static silence of a Winter he had known at first, and Soonyoung tried to hide his disappointment, walking back a few steps behind Wonwoo, hands crossed before his chest.

"You made a lake," Wonwoo murmured, squatting down to dip his fingers into the cool water. It froze, white chasing the ripples and swallowing them whole. "What for?"

Wonwoo stood up before Soonyoung could answer, footsteps light and wary as he walked on water. Wonwoo did not drown; the water turned into ice before he could. He walked straight across the lake, frost echoing his steps until he reached the other end. The lake had frozen over into white, tinges of Wonwoo's baby blue all over its now solid surface and the Sun made the few leaves stuck in the ice apparent. Soonyoung held his arms out to keep his balance, planning to follow Wonwoo to the other end of the lake when the other met him halfway, face still unreadable and the ice underneath him solidifying into pure ivory, shades of blue curling away.

Soonyoung had his tongue caught in his throat. There was no reason he could offer as to why he had built the lake; there were too many to count, swarming in his head like the blizzards Wonwoo brought every once in a while, when too many people died, when his snow piled too high and nothing survived. "I made it for you," was his weak response to Wonwoo's unwavering gaze, hard as stone.

"You made a lake for me." Wonwoo pulled his lips in between his teeth, arms hanging awkwardly by his sides, uncertain as to where they should go. A peculiar shade of purple marred his face, across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. "No one has ever done that for me."

"Well, now someone has," Soonyoung chuckled nervously, hands itching to reach out to Wonwoo as they wiggled against the cold.

"Forests hate me, Soonyoung."

Wonwoo had always been taller than Soonyoung, limbs long and gangly like the bare branches of perennial trees when they shrivel upon Winter's arrival. But in that moment, he seemed much smaller, small enough for Soonyoung to hold without collapsing from the cold, without having to tiptoe and spread his arms wide. It was a desire to keep, to curl around, curl like the soft curves which were the design of Wonwoo's frost, curl around in the cave some ways beyond the lake and protect. The green did not matter. Soonyoung would rot the entire Earth if it meant Wonwoo would sleep soundly come nighttime.

"I don't hate you," he said, one step closer to Wonwoo. "I would never. This Forest loves you."

There was no more space in between them; Soonyoung had his arms around Wonwoo, the cold no longer a threat to him when Wonwoo wrapped his arms tightly around Soonyoung, icicles clawing at the dark branches as he nuzzled his head into Soonyoung's shoulder.

Unlike the lake, Soonyoung did not freeze. It was pink where his skin met Wonwoo's.

 

 

Winter's visits always seemed shorter than the rest of the Seasons, and Soonyoung was left to his own Forest, covering the entire mountain, now, gladioli growing where his feet had stepped over, hands sprouting tiny shoots in one second and rotting a whole row of birch the next. Autumn did not have to do much anymore, spending her time lounging about the lake while Soonyoung shed all the leaves, darkened the bark, and painstakingly crafted the pine cones from scratch to prepare for Wonwoo's arrival.

"How odd," she said, kicking water to Soonyoung's face. "No Forest has ever been so excited for Winter to come."

"I'm not your average Forest, Yuna."

Soonyoung wiped the water away and motioned for Autumn to scoot over. She obliged, but not without her signature pout, giving way for Soonyoung to circle the lake and sprinkle the dead leaves on water. The reds and oranges cascaded onto gleaming crystal, like fire.

"What's all this for?" Autumn muttered, picking up the leaves that were the same rust-red as her dress only to throw them back to the water. Soonyoung motioned for the wind to carry the leaves further away from Autumn, ripples forming where rust touched diamond. "You should just rot them more, until they're soil again."

"I can," Soonyoung started, "but Wonwoo likes it, seeing the leaves frozen in ice."

Autumn hummed in thought, straightening her knees as she got up on her feet, patting the dirt off her dress. The dirt rained down with more rust flaking off the hem of her skirt. "Tell him I said hello, that he should come play with us more often. Seungkwan and Seulgi miss him a lot."

Soonyoung nodded. "I will."

"Did you know that we're getting replaced soon?" said Autumn in a soft voice, almost hesitant. "Us, the Seasons."

"You're Seasons," Soonyoung scoffed. "You can't be replaced."

"That's what you think," Autumn laughed. "We can, and it's time."

Soonyoung stared on at the rust-red flaking off Autumn's dress while her skin grew sallower the longer he looked. Autumn kept smiling, regardless, like she had flames behind her, amber singing the tips of her hair and it made sparks as Soonyoung took her hand and spun her around; his last hurrah for the Season.

 

 

When Winter fell upon the Forest again, he dragged a different blanket on his back; not too different, but different enough for Soonyoung to notice its grey, how the snow did not look powdery, but beamed in the dim sunlight, the blanket thinning out as it spread.

"You're melting," Soonyoung said, voice small. He had his brows furrowed in concern, swiping at the watery snow to confirm his suspicion.

"It's been a hot year," Wonwoo assured him.

Soonyoung made the trees taller, blocking off the sun so that Wonwoo could bask in his tendrils of frost. Wonwoo went to the lake first, having missed it, and smiled at the bits of copper stuck in between layers of ice. "You remembered," he whispered, kneeling on the ice to run his fingers over frozen veins and leaf blades.

"Of course." Soonyoung let needle-like pine leaves fall and scatter onto the lake's frosty surface for Wonwoo to walk over and freeze.

"It's beautiful. Thank you."

Wonwoo carefully treaded the outskirts of the lake, uncharacteristically quiet footsteps alarming Soonyoung. The pine leaves did not freeze under the soles of Wonwoo's feet. They remained as they were, but with a sheen of moisture clinging onto the green, and Soonyoung could not help but let his warm, warm hands grab Wonwoo's thin arm. It was wet to the touch. The green around them darkened to something brown, rotten.

"Wonwoo," Soonyoung said with wide eyes, "you're melting."

He did not receive anything in reply; Wonwoo stayed around the lake until Spring rolled into the Forest with hummingbirds and azaleas. He left as quietly as he came, and Soonyoung did not notice Wonwoo's absence until Seungkwan asked him why the lake was still half-frozen.

 

 

Soonyoung cried for the first time when Wonwoo came to the Forest lugging a waterfall on his back. That Winter, it rained, and the soft soil slid down the mountainside as fast as Soonyoung's tears fell, fat drops rolling atop skin until they hit Wonwoo's fingers which had thawed to stubs. The village did not celebrate Solstice Day, brown mud in the houses and in the children, stuck between bits of spine. Soonyoung had an army of flies as a crown until Summer took pity and burned the calamity away one last time.

 

 

Winter was quiet in how the birds flew past him, their squawks too faint to be head, and how the animals would avoid him altogether. Within his realm of ice and torrential snow was death upon doom laced with a numbing misery. A doe-eyed thing galloped past him, and her damp lashes clumped together permanently.

"Do you get tired of the white?" Soonyoung asked, the first time Wonwoo came to the Forest. That was not his real question. _Do you get tired of the hatred?_

"Sometimes," Wonwoo told him, all those years ago.

It was hard to grow a flower in Winter. Soonyoung managed to pop some grass flowers into bloom, but they were dull, colorless, and the petals too weak to Wonwoo's touch.

Winter slowly turned into the lake Soonyoung built for him; less ice, less snow, more water. Soonyoung noticed how Summer grew more impatient, more tired over the years, how she overstayed her welcome in his Forest, how the fires had grown more violent. A spark blazing in the sky as it formed its own fireworks, heat that knew no limits, for Soonyoung tried and the old burns Summer left him stung.

Spring was doing no better himself; flowers bloomed out of turn, rain pouring down like there was no tomorrow before he left for Summer to unleash the drought too early in the year, statice screaming in her wake. Soonyoung pitied Autumn. She was left to pick up the pieces Seungkwan and Seulgi left her, clean everything up as the rust-red kept flaking off her and there was no end to the mess, her ankles swelling from walking in circles as she cried amber tears.

"See you next year, Soonyoung," Yuna whispered as Soonyoung held her for what felt like the last time. Next year was what she said, but they knew better. Soonyoung knew better. Her dress gone, the skin underneath Soonyoung's fingers like brittle paper.

"See you," he whispered back all the same. Yuna did not need the painful reminder, he thought. When she left the Forest, her hair was wispy, strands caught in dark branches and falling apart to join the twigs underneath her tiny feet.

 

 

"This Forest loves you," Soonyoung said upon Wonwoo's arrival. He was grey, almost translucent at the edges, and Soonyoung winced at the slosh of water trailing after him. It was not a waterfall, but a stream of excess warmth most foreign to Winter.

Wonwoo smiled a brittle smile in response, as thin as the ice covering his lake. It was no longer safe to step on, not when Wonwoo could no longer freeze the water underneath. He would fall, and the cold that he once thrived upon would kill him.

The Forest was too dark, too green for Winter. Soonyoung had sweat on his palms, lines forming on his forehead when he felt the dampness on his shoulder where Wonwoo laid his head upon. "You're melting, Wonwoo," Soonyoung muttered pathetically, voice barely above a whisper as he lowered his head. Hanging roots slithered down to shield them both from the Sun, but it was still too warm. Their faces were nearly touching, lips shy of meeting because Soonyoung feared of his own heat, feared the dreams he had of water slipping past his fingers where there was once a solid body.

So many _once_ s, but Soonyoung had yet to learn how to grow flowers in the Winter. Wonwoo told him it was alright, that Soonyoung had done enough as a Forest, had done more than any other Forest ever did for Winter. Soonyoung rose daffodils from the icy ground, but their petals were of a pale, sickly yellow, crumbling away before Wonwoo even got to touch them.

"I'm so sorry," Soonyoung sobbed, surrendering into the crook of Wonwoo's sharp shoulders as hot tears seared through the ice. Wonwoo did not let go.

"No, I'm sorry," Wonwoo consoled him, fingers like a blizzard when they smoothed down Soonyoung's back. "I'm sorry for leaving." Between them was mud and dead grass, bogs of water and patches of ice strewn about the plains. Viridian and ivory were fragments of a distant memory; Soonyoung and Wonwoo held hands in quagmires where the grime was waist-deep.

They heard the solemn footfalls of Seungkwan's final visit as Spring, but the Forest was not ready, and Winter could not leave. There were stronger roots and thicker branches, breaking the ice and soaking in snow. Unyielding, unrelenting, without remorse. There was no repentance in the way Wonwoo's tears trailed after Soonyoung's, hollow tracks down his own frost when Soonyoung pulled him in tighter, no guilt in the way his frail fingers raked red down Soonyoung's solid back.

"Soonyoung," Wonwoo cried, "let me go."

The trees splintered and destroyed themselves from within, redwood drying and cracking, round rings of black on white exposed to air that stilled as the days went by. The blades of grass dulled down to something soft, warm for a split second before the cold shushed it. The animals fled; whatever stayed had ice in their lungs. The winds were cruel, whipping smooth stones to jagged edges which could not decide between crimson and pewter, atmosphere a heavy thing that was solid, crushing.

"I won't let go of you," Soonyoung wheezed, the arc of his back a grief-stricken monument greater than his notion of _please stay here_ as he hung over Wonwoo, the _forever_ in his awareness being the only thing keeping him somewhat alive.

"Why won't you?" Winter had ceased to exist for that moment, and so did the Forest. It was only Soonyoung, Wonwoo, and eternity looming before them. Wonwoo gleamed, a dim sparkle like the lake that was his home, the home Soonyoung had built for him. Soonyoung inhaled the large crater of melted ice deeply, lungs pricked and lips blue.

His last words before the final blade of grass died were, "This Forest loves you."

 

 

"I love you too."

 

 

***

 

 

The tundra seems barren, dead. The trees are short and bald, Sun shining high above the mountains but its rays do not reach the infinite floors of snow covering roots encased in ice. Moss tickles the dark branches, lichen nibbling away at copper-edged rocks to reveal a brilliant, smoothed-out silver.

Do not be fooled, it is still alive.

 

 

***

 

 

Yerim's feet bleed and tear, walking across a floor of ice and broken twigs and bones, all the way to a gaping crater where her grandmother told her was once a dazzling home for Winter.

 _Not Winter, Wonwoo_ , she would rectify. Winter is a cold, merciless thing. Wonwoo would pick up a rabbit to kiss the spot between its beady eyes. Yerim saw the wall of her grandmother's study, scrawls of foreign poetry and aged sketches of black hair followed by a long cape of blinding white, roots and dirt staining its edges where leaves creeped upon.

No Winter had ever loved a Forest as much as Wonwoo did, her grandmother said. Forests are hot, bordering on scalding as they thrive upon the Sun, bleed death and birth and pant through the excruciating task of shouldering Earth on their backs. Yerim draws in a sharp breath; it feels like inhaling saltwater.

Right in the center of the crater was a frozen mess; hardened mud and dead leaves like downy duvets for the two bodies which laid there, side-by-side yet not quite, entangled in a painful-looking knot of limbs, thin tracks of translucent silver cracking their cheeks. She has never met them, but she knows. Her grandmother had recounted the story endlessly by the fire she sparked from her worn fingertips.

"Not leaving?" Yerim whispers, kneeling at the edge. She is unclear as to whom the question is for.

In the center of the crater with their arms around each other, it is hard to see who woke to answer Yerim. "I'm not leaving," said a low voice, a soft voice, an ethereal sound that fades faster than Yerim can suck in another lungful of icy air.

Yerim blinks; in that miniscule timeframe, the two bodies inch closer to one another. Between them, she realizes, is a single stalk weighted down by two clusters of tiny flowers; small and insignificant almost, yet she cannot look away. The thin petals bloom silently under her gaze.

"I forgot what the flower was," said her grandmother when she asked as a child. "But I remember what it meant."

Yerim holds back tears, the blinding shine of dew on the cream-white petals stinging her eyes.

_Sanctuary._

__


End file.
